Donate a Pint

Leaving Liverpool was one of the strangest and emotionally mixed experiences of my life and the torment had been building up for months. After leaving work, saying goodbye to friends and then packing my life onto a boat, it had been a long, long goodbye. In the week leading up to the 16th September, a date that will live long in my memory, a number of close friends and family had made Hurculian efforts to come and visit. I was very touched by their committment and it made leaving all the harder. I put off making the final family phone calls until I could delay no longer. They hurt and each one brought that familiar lump to my throat. I guess it was a testiment to how much they all mean to me but I think it was safe to say that I was a wreck. Thankfully I had the solitude of a hotel room to enable me to shed my tears and regain some kind of composure before battling through the next call. Was this really living the dream?

The week had been full of happy memories, revisiting the city I’d enjoyed as a student, visits, texts, emails and calls to wish me fair winds and plenty of team bonding sessions over beers and climbing walls. In between times, we also had to prepare the boat for our 35,000 mile adventure. It had all come to this; 11:38 September 16 and Western Australia 2011.com slipped her lines. It was a painful and frustrating couple of hours as we progressed through the lock system, friends and family metres away but with the carnival atmosphere in the docks there was no way we could converse - if ever there was a time when eyes tell a story it was then.

As soon as we hit the Mersey, the sunshine disappeared, the winds picked up, nerves died down and the excitement began. This was it. I was starkly aware that this was 5 years of dreaming coming to fruition.

We set up in formation behind the tall ship that was leading and had a quiet chuckle at the thousands of spectators lining the dockside that were soaked by the jets of water from the fire boat behind. From my perspective the start was a confusing and disorientating mess to the extent that I didn’t even know the race had started until we were 1 minute into it. Cannons fired boats were trying to t-bone each other to get around the buoys and there was plenty of screaming to be heard over the high winds.

Leaving the cannons and crowds of Liverpool behind, we battled up the Mersey to receive yet more cannon fire and appreciation from spectators lining the Wirral and taking a breather to catch a glimpse of the airobatic display behind us. The winds were ferocious - what had happened to the sunshine we’d enjoyed all week in the docks?

As the watch leader I was terrified. I felt responsible for the 7 lives on my watch and it was blowing a gale. The first 36 hours of the race were some of the toughest conditions I’d faced and I felt as though I should have known what was going on! It was a long night; there were sails in the wrong places, winches were slipping, we were tacking every couple of minutes, we were one crew member down due to illness and yes, I was back in that very familiar but unenviable place of reproducing everything I’d ever swallowed and more over the decking. To make matters worse, the skipper was in bed on IV fluids - not ideal by any means. I didn’t once change my clothing or clean my teeth and I was asleep in my bunk before I could get into my sleeping bag. I just wanted to wake up and the race be over.

After that baptism of fire, conditions started to change. We had large swells but northerly winds enabled us to surf down them which was great fun. Maybe the Southern Ocean will be fun afterall? I started to settle into my role as Watch Leader, the sun started to shine, getting up 4 times a day became the norm, the winds were dying and my stomach settled down. Now I was enjoying my sailing again.

The contrast over those first couple of days and the final hours was incredible. The sun was shining, the seas were a millpond and we were struggling to find any wind - we managed 0 knots on the speedo! As a result, the race committee decided to change the finish line so that we could start motoring at midnight and make it to La Rochelle on a reasonable day. The evening brought what I expect will remain as a highlight of the whole trip. Phospheresence was flickering in the waters and then we were joined by a school of dolphins, their outlines highlighted in the fluorescent sparkles. You could watch them clearly honing in on the boat like a torpedo, turning on a halfpence, playing just off our bow. In the dead of night, I lay on the deck, my hand inches from their fins, ecstatic to see these wonderful creatures just off the French coast.

I was woken half way through an off-watch and told that skipper wanted a word. I wasn’t sure what it was but I feared the worst. He informed myself and the other Watch Leader that we were in 9th position and with the 10th boat having retired due to a serious accident onboard we took the option to finish our race early, start the motor and try to get into La Rochelle before the locks closed to enable our 3 crew in need of a dentist a chance of early treatment. It was gutting to have to admit defeat but it would only have been delaying the inevitable.

It was a relaxed and pleasant trip in and despite being a competitive sportsman, coming in 9th didn’t bother me - old age perhaps or maybe there’s more to this experience than winning. But then it hit me. We were in the town hall for prize giving and we had no role to play in the ceremony other than standing back and applauding. I didn’t like it one bit and my determination built. We will do better next time. What happened? I don’t really know but I think it was a combination of tactics, not pushing the boat as hard as others and not pushing ourselves. The conditions are not an excuse, afterall every boat suffered in the same way.

It’s been a good rest, I’ve restocked on plenty of pain au chocolat (found out where la gare really is - Tricolore was correct!!) and hopefully we’ve rejuvinated. There’s a steely determination on board to do better and I think we will. With so much having happened in the first 4 days, I can only wonder what the next 4 weeks and 5,000 miles will bring….

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.